


Impastata

by hitlikehammers



Series: Chymosin [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (With Limited Success), Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes is a Good Man, Fluff, Gen, M/M, POV Outsider, Pining Steve, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Reminiscing, Running Into Someone From The Old Days, Scouring the Old Neighborhood for Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 18:16:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2078256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's desperate to get a glimpse, just a shred of his Bucky back, so of course he tries to take him 'round their old haunts, tries to spark <i>something</i> within his best friend; his everything. </p><p>It doesn't work out as planned.</p><p>But that doesn't mean it doesn't <i>work</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impastata

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ReadyPlayerZero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReadyPlayerZero/gifts).



> For [TeddyLaCroix](http://archiveofourown.org/users/teddylacroix)'s gorgeous prompt—I hope this fits at least some of the bill. Many thanks to [speakmefair](http://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair) and [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) for the read-throughs <3

It’s dark. It was always dark back then, and it’s still dark now, and that’s good, that’s real fucking good because the lights won’t catch on the knuckles of Bucky’s left hand, aren’t bright enough for that—aren’t angled right, and even if a glint got through between the moments when the glove comes off for eating and when it slips back on again; even if a little glimmer refracts, well.

S’his _left_ hand.

 _Fuck, Rogers,_ he chides himself, breathes deep. _Way to carry a goddamned torch._

Thing is, though: Bucky won’t remember this. Steve’s not even sure Bucky’d have remembered it before, to be honest. They’d been here once, just the once, and it’d almost done Steve’s lungs in, not to mention his back, the trek from home on a day that muggy, that thick with the heat, but he’d insisted. 

And Bucky was never good at telling him no. Not back then.

But they’d found out the hard way that the Soldier’d had a stint around Ditmas Park that was off-book, and if Steve could ever have forgotten the way that life had always felt inside his chest, before—if Steve was even _capable_ of somehow managing to cast aside the visceral memory of those fists upon fists upon fists clenching and clawing under the ribs, well: he’d have damn well remembered it then as his heart twisted, convulsed before it sank down low because fuck; _fuck_.

They’d only come up here to try and jog a memory, any memory—a sight, a sound, a scent; they’d only come because Steve was fucking desperate, and damn near writhing with the way it went about crawling through his veins, but now, _now_ —

What the hell was Steve supposed to _do_ if he couldn’t even walk Bucky around the old neighborhood, hoping for a scrap of their history in the soil, in the brick; what the hell was Steve supposed to do if the memories that surfaced weren’t of sweat in the summer and shared beds in the winter but of the whirring hum of stasis, of function, of _mission_ ; not of the touch of Steve’s heaving chest as Bucky eased him through a fit but the give of human flesh at the neck, around the throat—what the _hell_ was Steve supposed to do?

Jesus _Christ_.

Steve’s watching Bucky over the top of the menu, and Bucky’s watching nothing against the far wall, and Steve wants to scream, wants to grab Bucky and hold him, or shake him, or sob against him, fucking _something_ , and it’s the incessant flicker of something caustic, something lethal under the skin, in the air that he breathes that distracts him, that takes him away from the here and the now and the look in Bucky’s eyes that makes him so very different, so very far away: it’s the ache that throws Steve off, and makes it so that when the elderly woman with the walker is maneuvering her way through the narrow path between the tables, Steve doesn’t notice.

Steve doesn’t notice until she knocks rather spectacularly into Bucky’s kneecap with an ‘Oh!’ so rattly and withered that Steve thinks he could exhale hard enough to break it; Steve doesn’t noticed until she knocks into _Bucky_ , who walks three steps behind, or nine in front, just to keep enough space between him and everything else. Bucky, who Steve can’t touch because, when he last tried, Bucky’d damn near hyperventilated while still managing to nearly crush Steve’s wrist like the bones were chalk, or sea-clumped sand.

Oh, _fuck_.

Steve’s only got the inclination to stand once Bucky’s already on his feet, and Steve knows, Steve _knows_ that however fast he can be, however fast he _needs_ to _be_ , Bucky’s got the jump, Bucky can strike the killing blow against this frail innocent before Steve could move to stop him, even if he aimed to kill: there’s nothing, there’s nothing, he’s failed—

Except Steve’s moving, and Bucky’s moving. 

But Bucky’s not moving toward the small, hunched woman with the clear, keen gaze.

Bucky’s moving away, down the untamed path of half-pushed in chairs and oddly-shaped tables, clearing the way with a single-minded deftness that’s both terrifying and entrancing, and Steve can’t breathe, he cannot fucking _breathe_ when Bucky glances upward—only for a second, doesn’t make eye contact, and Steve wonders if it’s a conscious thing, or if he just _can’t_ —but then he’s sliding out a chair with such careful attention, then he’s gesturing toward the woman who’s stopped to watch, just at Steve’s side, just where she bumped Bucky’s leg.

“Ma’am,” Bucky murmurs toward the floor, and Steve’s just this side of gaping when the woman grins, and nods, making her way in slow, measured shuffles toward the proffered seat.

“What a nice young man,” she coos as she settles, and Bucky looks like he might mean to push her closer to the table, except he’s interrupted by a just-slightly younger woman—a daughter, Steve thinks—who’s flustered and fussing at her mother for refusing to wait while she spoke to the man at the bar about more accessible seating.

Her mother just quirks an eyebrow as the daughter thanks Bucky in passing and makes to reassume the tending of her wily elderly parent.

Bucky’s back in his chair, staring again, but his stare is different, now, and Steve’s heart is pumping full and hard inside his chest and here, now—as Steve tries his damnedest to even out his breaths: here and now, Steve doesn’t want to dwell on the whys.

“Buck?” Steve barely breathes it, barely dares to interrupt the subtle frown—an expression of more significance, more depth behind his eyes, more frequency to the way that he blinks than Steve’s seen so far, than Bucky’s trusted Steve to bear witness to; Steve barely breathes, and Bucky barely moves, but there’s a twitch in his jaw that Steve thinks wouldn’t have been visible some weeks ago; wouldn’t have been betrayed by the Soldier, if it was just the Soldier here in front of him, and Steve follows the line of inquiry, Steve clings to the rope of it and hopes, by god.

He _hopes_.

“So kind of him,” Steve picks up what the older woman says: the only stimulus Bucky can have honed to, here, within a given perimeter. The woman’s words are all saccharine nostalgia—and Steve knows something in her face, sees something in her that’s more than just shared longing, but damn if he knows what it _is_. “He reminds me, reminds me of...” 

The woman pauses, tilts her head as her expression falls, and Steve feels something in him tighten, contract as he watches her out the corner of his eye, keeps Bucky fixed in what’s left of his line of sight.

“Do you remember, baby?” the elder of the two leans in across the table toward her daughter, takes softer hands, if only just, between her cragged ones and lifts them in her grasp. “That Barnes boy?”

Steve’s always aware, these days, of the way his heart beats, moment to moment, more steady than not; he’s always aware, so he knows, he knows for a _fact_ that it stops.

It flat-out fucking _stops_.

“‘Course I remember,” her daughter smiles, smile and tight but fond, somehow, all the same. “ _Stevie and Buck, Bucky and Steve_ ,” she singsongs, to her mother’s delight.

“ _Woe betide one if the other should leave_ ,” her mother finishes with a grin, shaking her head ruefully, and Steve’s starting to feel faint, starting to feel small. “May as well have been joined at the hip.”

“Stevie didn’t need _another_ strain on his health, momma,” her daughter chides gently, and Steve, fuck, Steve can barely breathe, can barely move, and for all that his heart went on strike just a second ago it’s a machine now, pumping so hard that he can’t quite see color.

“Poor dear,” the mother sighs. “Lion in a lamb’s body, that one. Fierce as anything.”

The daughter, Steve can hear it, sighs in agreement. The mother, Steve can see it, has a certain glimmer, a certain knowing in her gaze.

“Loved something fierce, too,” she says tellingly, and Steve’s gut feels filled with lead, even though he knows times have changed, even though he _knows_ —

“Come now, pet,” Steve blinks back to the now, takes in the mother’s tilted head and the daughter’s questioning quirk of a brow. “Those two knuckleheads, they weren’t just pals.”

The daughter sucks on her lower lip, considering, and that’s when Steve knows her. That’s when the decades melt away and Steve knows in her a tiny girl with three front teeth who bit at her lip so hard her mother was half-afraid she’s gnaw it clean off; Steve can _see_ that baby girl from two doors down, and _Christ_.

Christ, but what time _does_ to the world. 

“Remember when Buck used to come and ask if we had any chores, or if dad had any work needing done around the store?” Little Geanie Wayland, who’s wrinkled and worn now, but Steve recognizes the look in her, same as Peggy’s got, just less paper-thin around the bones: it’s a wearing that’s well-earned, well-made: well-loved.

And Steve is _glad_ for it. 

“Always so he could make sure Steve had what he needed. Did you ever see that boy going out to enjoy himself?” Mrs. Wayland says: Mrs. Wayland, who shared shifts with Steve’s mom on the TB ward, but was the luckier of the two and now she’s got that worn-loved look to her as well, and Steve has to wonder how you thank the universe for the small miracles—Steve fights the urge to reach for Bucky as he wonders whether it’s anyone’s right to thank the universe at all.

“He was a very good dancer,” Geanie points out, and Steve wants to concur, because even now, even _now_ , after _everything_ , with a Bucky seated across from him who is not quite Bucky but is entirely, indisputably _Steve’s Bucky_—even now, Steve can still feel the twist in his middle when he thinks about Buck with the girls, on the dates, all the time.

“He hardly ever had more’n one date with any given girl,” Mrs. Wayland counters, and Steve stops short at that.

 _Really_?

“He was just picky,” Geanie protests, but it’s a token thing, and Mrs. Wayland knows it.

“He was just runnin’,” she proclaims simply, and maybe.

Steve should know better, now, than to lend so much credence to hope.

“Do you remember the winter you got so sick, baby?” Mrs. Wayland voice suddenly lowers, suddenly softened, and her hand is shaking round her glass so the ice clatters but she doesn’t seem to hear it, doesn’t seem to notice: she’s very far away.

“You’ve told me about it,” Geanie says, reaches out gently to steady her mother’s hand, to bring her back.

“We couldn’t afford your medicine,” Mrs. Wayland tells her, tone jagged; tight. “At least, not enough of it, not with me at home with you.” Her expression shifts, and Steve doesn’t know where it’s going, or why, until she speaks again: 

“James Barnes was in no better of a boat.”

And yeah: Steve knows that look. Steve’s seen that look. Steve remembers, and he tries to imagine the memory of it on Bucky’s face onto the Bucky here, before him.

He doesn’t know that it works; doesn’t know if that echo that fits is real, or just wishful thinking. 

“Steve had a rough time that year,” Mrs. Wayland continues, and Steve tries to remember which year, amongst the worst of them, amongst the whole of them. “I’d have put money on him not lasting to Christmas,” her voice is thin, low; “much as it broke my heart.”

Steve stares down at his hands atop the table, but not before he catches something pass across Bucky’s features, something primal and visceral and it’s gone before Steve can grasp at it, define it, but Steve cannot deny the way his whole body responds to it, remember a thing his mind just can’t, and maybe there’s something in him that understands it, that makes a warmth flood through him, a soft hand in the center of his chest that cradles the important things there; doesn’t clench, and god.

God, _please_.

“Bucky asked me if I wanted him to keep an eye on you, while I went in to get a few hours’ pay,” Mrs. Wayland’s going on, still strained, still sad, but Steve’s only half there with them, half following the words, and just because Bucky’s hands aren’t curled up in fists doesn’t mean that Steve can’t read the tension in the fingers, against the leather of the glove. “Said it was no trouble, he already had one patient to keep an eye on.”

“I could hardly bear it, of course,” Mrs Wayland shakes her head, all thin silver curls. “But I thought if I could just make up the difference, get you the medicine you needed, then maybe we’d be alright,” her voice trails, raspy and faint: “Maybe we’d all be alright…”

“Momma,” Little Geanie reaches across and gathers up her mother’s hands, strokes reassuringly the swollen veins between the knuckles, down the backs and Steve wonders just how well Dr. Eskine’s serum really worked, just how fixed he _is_ , because his heart’s so goddamned _sore_ in that moment that he doesn’t think he can stand it, doesn’t think that anybody lives through the kind of burning that comes when Steve looks at Bucky’s hands and wants to reach out, wants to drawn near, wants to touch with a tenderness that isn’t allowed, that he can’t show, can’t have—

It fucking _hurts_.

“Your father, though,” Mrs. Wayland collects herself, laughs with just a hint of dampness as she pats her daughter’s hand. “Proud man, your father. Couldn’t abide letting that boy look after you, when _he_ could have been at the Yards getting wages.” 

“It wasn’t as if we could offer him much,” Mrs. Wayland goes on, and Steve can feel the build of it—he remembers that time, that place, remembers how badly off they all were, but above all else, in and out of the haze of the fever, Steve remembers that somehow Bucky was always there when he woke, when he stirred—somehow, they had everything they needed, and Bucky was always _there_.

Steve had never questioned that, before.

Steve’s a fucking idiot.

“And either way, it was going to be close,” Mrs. Wayland says. “Even if I got all the hours I could, we couldn’t have managed rent with what we needed for you.”

Steve can feel the hum of his heart against his lungs as his breathing goes still. 

“He bought your medication, Geanie,” Mrs. Wayland nearly whispers, marveling and fond, and something bursts in Steve’s blood like honey and fire because that’s exactly how a person should speak about James Buchanan Barnes; that is _exactly_ how a person should speak about him, like he’s unfathomable, like he’s precious, like he’s _everything_ : some kind of angel in disguise.

“All the money we were giving him to look after you, he just gave it straight back,” Mrs. Wayland tells her daughter. “Left the bottle on the table,” she shakes her head, all lingering disbelief, even after so long. “He was working ungodly hours, you understand, and all the time he shoulda been sleepin’, keeping his own strength up, he was tending to you, and to Stevie, and visiting every family for the next twenty blocks, seein’ what he could do to earn a little extra, get Steve something healthy to go in his broth at night.”

And Steve remembers the flavors, the textures: the way that he felt stronger when he could bear to take a spoonful or two—and fuck; _fuck_.

 _Bucky_.

“It was an act of God Himself that child didn’t fall ill himself, that winter,” Mrs. Wayland speaks it, suddenly solemn. “Nothing less than Heaven’s hands in that, make no mistake.”

And Steve’s pulled taut over his bones in that moment, heart pounding, threatening to snap it all, to shatter him to pieces as Mrs. Wayland shakes her head once more, smiling small. 

“But he was such a good boy,” she says simply, but it’s full of truth; conviction. “He was,” her voice cracks a little, and Steve can feel the burning behind his eyes start to creep too close: “He was such a good _man_.”

“He died, didn’t he?” Geanie asks softly. “In the war?”

Mrs. Wayland doesn’t say anything, just grabs for her water and lifts it to her lips. 

“Like I said,” she murmurs around the glass. “A _good_ man.” She sips, and tilts her head before huffing, just a little. “Don’t know that they make ‘em like that anymore.”

There’s silence, and Steve wonders if the pumping of his blood can be heard from their table; he wondersif Bucky can hear it, with the way the serum works.

He wants to look up, wants to see, except he _can’t_.

“Steve looks sad,” he hears Geanie say. “Now.”

“Haven’t seen much of him, have we,” Mrs. Wayland muses: idly, except anything but.

“Not after all that,” Steve glances up through his eyelashes just in time to see Geanie gesture broadly; “In Washington.”

But Mrs. Wayland: Mrs. Wayland, who taught Steve and Bucky how to add taste to a boiled potato, who hollered at them for being too rowdy past dark—Mrs. Wayland just narrows her eyes and speaks, flat but clear.

“They were both such good boys, good men. And that’s not a thing that time can take away.” She nods, to herself, or to the world, Steve doesn’t know; doesn’t know that it matters. “If you’ve got a good soul, then you are always gonna have a good soul.”

Geanie watches her mother for a long string of second before she nods, too.

“I hope he’s alright,” Geanie says, lets it float a little weightless, and maybe that’s why it settles like bile in Steve’s throat, like metal in his stomach. “Maybe without everyone looking, he can find a way to be happy.” 

“Maybe,” Mrs. Wayland echoes, but she sounds doubtful. “Woe betide one, though,” she sighs. “Poor darling.”

Steve wants to fucking _scream_. 

“Let’s order, Mom,” Geanie urges softly, once the silence outside Steve’s head, once the unbearable noise within drags on too long.

“Mmm, yes,” Mrs. Wayland says, turning to the menu, breaking the still.

Steve’s still drowning in the din, still spinning, still reeling and _aching_ and—

The touch on his hand is so foreign, so unexpected, that it almost seems unreal. He blinks, blinks: stares at it; follows it up the dark sleeve, to the broad shoulder, to the curve of a neck Steve _knows_ , and Bucky’s staring at his own hand on Steve’s, confused, somehow, but resolute, and Steve thinks he might die here, might break here, but just as he thinks it, Bucky’s grip upon his hand tightens—not a threat, but something steadfast. Something etched inside of bones.

“Buck.” Steve mouths it, but no sound comes out.

“Mrs. Wayland,” Bucky croaks, hoarse with too much silence, too many screams. “Mrs. Wayland and her little Gee.”

Steve only just chokes back the sob that rises, because Gee, _Gee_.

Only Bucky called that baby girl “Gee.” 

“That was us,” Bucky whispers, and there’s still confusion, but there’s recognition, there’s an overwhelmedness that does not falter, does not fade. “We were, we...I—” and Bucky’s grasping at fragments, clutching at words. 

But his hand never leaves Steve’s on the table, not for a moment.

Not once.

Steve swallows. He doesn’t know what to do.

He doesn’t know.

“Wanna order?”

Bucky stares, blankly, back to the place where their hands meet, and he’s blinking too fast, he’s breathing too heavy, and goddamnit, god _damnit_ , Steve’ fucked it up, of course he has, he—

“I,” Bucky breathes out, tight: controlled, like he’s warring with himself, and Steve suspects that’s precisely what it is, what _this_ is. “I don’t, I...” 

And Bucky’s eyes slide to the menu between them, flicker up to Steve’s, and Steve can see the way Bucky’s throat works, the way his mind races behind that gorgeous, shining gaze, and Steve doesn’t know whether Bucky can’t choose, if Bucky doesn’t know what he likes; whether Bucky doesn’t know if he can stomach then food or whether he even remembers what it means to be hungry: Steve doesn’t know.

Steve doesn’t care. 

“I—” 

“S’okay,” Steve breathes, wants to laugh and cry all at once as he takes a chance, tries something new—gives where Bucky’s giving, where Bucky’s staying within arm’s reach, where Bucky’s saying all he can without the words.

He slowly turns Bucky’s hand, holds it in his own, presses palm to palm and waits.

Bucky doesn’t move, so much as lets gravity work along his fingers, lets them fall between Steve’s and Steve exhales, slow, and grateful.

So fucking grateful.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve whispers, chancing a little squeeze of his fingers around Bucky’s, a soft press of their palms. “It’s okay. We’ve got time.”

And Bucky doesn’t pull away. Bucky stays.

They’ve got time.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to join me on [tumblr](hitlikehammers.tumblr.com), do feel most welcome :)
> 
> Also: the title ties in to the location of the setting. Cookies if you can figure it out ;)


End file.
